Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes

Books are an attempt to control something that's uncontrollable.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

It is true that it is usually for their books that novelists reserve their most considered and ordered thoughts, but the fact is they arise inescapably from one consciousness: the same one that is occupied in all the other activities which make up a life.

All authors know that any book is a casting of runes, a reading of cards, a map of the palm and heart. We make up the ocean - then fall in. But we also write the life raft.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

I think that it's worthwhile to explore the ways in which you write the person that's writing your plays as opposed to simply assuming that it's all a natural process and there's no design in it. Because your public persona is designed, to a certain extent, and you can have fun and profit at various times doing that.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

I don't try to be satirical. I just try to get what's in my head on the page. And that part is hard for me to do. It takes a long, long time to make it poetic, somewhat essayistic.